1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in building materials and more particularly but not by way of limitation, to a building material and method of making same from normally waste products.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The manufacture of building materials such as concrete and the like from a mixture of components including wood fibers has been explored for many years. In fact, the use of straw in the making of bricks was practiced by the early Egyptians and attempts to utilize sawdust and the like have been investigated and experimented with for many years. Walter R. Friberge has made an extensive study of the utilization of sawdust in the manufacture of concrete and is the author of a publication of the University of Idaho dated October, 1953, relating to his activities in the field. The use of wood fibers such as sawdust in the manufacture of concrete results in a lightweight and insulative product that is very desirable, but prior experiments utilizing sawdust in combination with cement for the manufacture of concrete have been largely inefficient in that they require great quantities of cement in proportion to the sawdust in order to achieve the necessary strength for the end product. This resulted in a building material which was both expensive and heavy. In the Friberge method it was found that the addition of diatomite material to the sawdust tended to overcome some of the prior disadvantages. Diatomite is usually mined by open pit methods and the supply apparently far exceeds the demand but the mining of the product is an obvious ecological disadvantage.
In addition Mr. Friberge admits the diatomite mortar is fibrous and makes hand-mixing hard work. Other experiments utilizing fibrous materials in combination with cement for producing a building material have been attempted such as those shown in the Erricks U.S. Re. No. 24,003, Weiss U.S. Pat. No. 1,631,171, Bridgeford U.S. Pat. No. 3,533,725, Marra U.S. Pat. No. 3,671,377, Breslauer U.S. Pat. No. 3,705,837 and the Tjannberg U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,202. The Breslauer reference relates to wood flakes coated with portland cement; Weiss relates to the making of wall board from wood paste; Erricks shows a stabilizer for cellulosic materials; Bridgeford uses wood fibers mixed with polymer; Marra shows wood mass mixed with a binder; and Tjannberg discloses a method for making a cellulosic material fire resistant. None of the prior references and experiments appear to have successfully solved the problem of fibrous based building materials.